KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The U.S.-led coalition today said 25 Taliban were killed in a joint operation with Afghan forces in the country's south.

The joint attack occurred Thursday in the village of De Adam Khan, a coalition statement said.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, Col. Thomas Collins, said: "This engagement shows that coalition forces, working in concert with Afghan security forces, will counter the Taliban in all regions of the country."

Also, militants attacked a police checkpoint in a rare attack on the outskirts of Kabul, sparking a firefight that left one insurgent dead. Twelve men fired on the checkpoint for an hour before fleeing Thursday night, said police official Ali Shah Paktyawal.

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea urgently needs food after devastating floods and is willing to accept aid from South Korea.North Korea earlier this week refused to accept flood relief from the South's Red Cross society, apparently in anger over Seoul's decision to suspend food aid because of the North's missile launches last month."The most pressing thing for now is to address the issue of eating," Kim Song Won, head of the North's Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Committee in Dandong, China, told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.Kim indicated the North would be willing to accept relief supplies from Seoul. "There is no reason to reject it if (the South's government) sincerely wants to help with no political intentions," he said.The U.N. has said floods that began in mid-July killed at least 154 people and left another 127 missing.

SHANGHAI, China — A second Chinese city plans a mass dog slaughter to control a rabies outbreak, state media said today, days after a similar cull in which dogs were beaten to death prompted a torrent of criticism.Officials in the eastern city of Jining said Thursday they would kill all dogs within three miles of areas where rabies had been found, the official Xinhua News Agency said.The measure came in response to the deaths of 16 people from rabies in the last eight months, Xinhua said. It didn't say when the cull would begin. The city has about 500,000 dogs.Rabies cases are on the rise in China, with more than 2,000 people dying from the disease each year. Only 3 percent of the country's dogs are vaccinated against rabies.Last week, a county in southwestern Yunnan province killed 50,000 dogs after three people died of rabies.